


(un)conventional

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Conventions, Fluff, M/M, Writer!Castiel, convention au, mechanic!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spec Lit Con--Speckly Con, to it’s regular attendees--is an annual weekend-long event held in Chicago, dedicated to science fiction, fantasy and otherwise speculative literature. This year Dean's favorite author, C.J. Novak, is appearing as a panelist. Naturally, he shells out the cash for an all access pass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(un)conventional

With his eyes closed, Castiel feels each curve of the track. Against his cheek, the train's window buzzes and rattles, and blinks his eyes open, yawning widely as they sweep around the bend and up the gentle hillside.

Castiel has always liked trains. There’s something nostalgic about their vast journeys, something that reminds him of weekend afternoons when he was a kid, his mom’s hand tight around his as they took journeys across the state to visit his grandparents.

It was always exciting to him back then, and as soon as he steps onto a carriage, even now, he can't help but feel some shadow of that same thrill. So he always makes a point of taking a train on his long trips, much preferring the feeling of adventure they give him to the sterile, cold utilitarianism of air travel. His colleagues at Sandover Insurance back in Colorado, where he works an endlessly boring day job, are under the impression that he has a fear of flight. He finds that on average, people find it easier to accept cowardice in a man than romanticism, and so he lets them believe it. It’s all the same to him.

Beyond the occasional stilted conversation in an elevator, he hardly associates with any of them anyway, and he likes it that way. Work and life, separate. He keeps himself split neatly down the middle.

Two Castiel Novaks.

The false Castiel, whose face he wears daily, is a professional man, a dependable man. The false Castiel wears shiny black shoes and takes two sugars in his morning coffee. He smiles politely and asks his coworkers about their weekend trips and processes insurance claims efficiently. The real Castiel, on the other hand, is content to lounge about in his living room and listen to records for hours on end.

Shoes off, laptop open, a sci-fi novel half-written at his fingertips.

The real Castiel doesn't much like the false Castiel, but at least he pays the bills. As he looks out the window, the real Castiel thinks that he'd like it to be raining when he arrives in Chicago.

In his minds eye he envisages the train pulling into the station, startled pigeons flapping wildly over the tracks as the scraping whine of its brakes echoes across the platforms. He watches himself--an idealized version of himself, whose hair sits the way he tells it to and who is perhaps a little taller--stepping from the train onto the stained tile walkway, rain clinging to his hair and coat as he walks along the platform. He sees himself walk to the stairs, boots splashing in the occasional puddle. Because it’s all made up anyway, he throws in a beautiful stranger, but as soon as tries to picture them waiting, smiling with joy at the mere sight of him--the whole thing falls apart.

Union Station is mostly undercover, for one thing. Unless his agent changed her mind at the last minute, there's not going to be anybody to meet him here, and if the past thirty-four years are anything to go by, his hair will not now, or ever, stay in place.

Outside, the trees beside the track are thinning, slowly giving way to houses. They're around forty minutes from the next station, so he pulls his duffel from the floor by his feet and dumps it onto the seat beside him, rifling through it for his notebook.

 _Thinning trees_ , he writes at the top of the page, and chews on the end of his pen before crossing it out. _Sparse trees_ , he writes instead, _leaning like drunks in the yard._

He frowns down at the sentence and wonders what story it might grow into, if any, before lowering the pen and staring back out the window. He tries not to think about where he's going. The nerves overtake him anyway.

 

* * *

 

Dean hates trains. They're crowded, for one thing, and he's already had to move to a new seat when the first one he'd chosen turned out to have someone's discarded chewing gum stuck to the wall beside it. Minty fresh or not, it made him gag.

He’s on his way to Chicago for a sci-fi lit convention, and if his car was a little more fuel efficient he would have driven. As it is, his baby goes through gasoline like it’s going out of fashion, and with his savings already getting a little too low for his liking, he'd been forced to make the choice between driving and getting a basic ticket, or taking a train and buying the all access pass.

When the all access pass is going to get him into a reading of his favorite author’s new book and a writing workshop with that same author, among others, on top of prime seating at all of the panels he’s been looking forward to--it was kind of a no brainer.

Still, sitting in this uncomfortable seat for the past seven hours has been horrible almost to the point of regretting the entire thing.

When the train stops in Galesburg, Illinois, around three hours from his destination, a man with a young child climbs on board and takes the seats beside Dean. The kid is one bump in the track away from a full meltdown, and as Dean predicted on first seeing her, starts howling the second the train pulls away from the station. Dean ignores the noise for as long as he can, but when she hasn't stopped screaming after half an hour he stands. Grabs his overnight bag from under his seat and heads for the door into the next carriage. As he goes he mentally wishes the frazzled looking father luck.

There’s a teenager smoking on the platform in between carriages, and he nods at Dean as he shuffles by. Dean holds his breath and waves the smell away. The next carriage is almost full, and Dean scans the seats for one that won't put him right on top of anyone. Halfway down, he sees two open spaces beside a dark-haired guy about his age, leaning against the window in a maroon hoodie as he jots something down in a notebook. Dean makes his way over.

“This seat taken?” he asks, and the guy looks up from his writing. He's got the bewildered look of an artist, and Dean's second thought, right after _wow, he's cute_ , is that he looks kind of stressed.

“No, go ahead,” the guy says, and shifts his leather duffel off the empty seat to make room, “it's all yours.”

“Thanks.”

Dean sits down, shoves his stuff under the seat, and sighs in relief at the quiet. Ten minutes pass before he gets bored of the silence, and he leans down to pull out his copy of _A Length of Rope_ , flipping through it’s dog-eared pages to find his place. He's read the book at least a dozen times by now, and it's a few pages from his favorite part—when the main character, Emmanuel, discovers that he's the son of a god—that he feels eyes on him.

He looks up to find the man by the window has lowered his pen, and is staring at him. When he realizes Dean has caught him, his cheeks go a little pink and he starts to look away.

“Have you read it?” Dean asks him before he can, holding the book up, and the guy hesitates before clearing his throat.

“Is it... is it any good?”

“Hell yes,” Dean grins, “best thing since Cat’s Cradle.”

The guy’s eyes widen at that, and Dean takes it as a sign of disbelief.

“Seriously,” he says, flipping through the pages until he finds his favorite scene and holding it out for the guy to read. When the guy takes it, his hand brushes against Dean's, and they're warm and tan and elegant. Dean wonders if he plays piano, but lets the thought go as soon as it passes into his mind, choosing instead to watch his face as he reads the passage.

 

* * *

 

In the three years since he was first published, Castiel has encountered a grand total of five fans.

His books aren’t exactly best sellers, and he doesn’t even make enough money off them to quit his day job at Sandover, but here on a train on his way to the convention where he’ll be peddling his latest novel and hoping to drum up some interest, he’s had a copy of his 2005 debut thrust into his hands and compared to Vonnegut. By an incredibly handsome man, at that.

He can’t even focus on the passage he’s being told to read.

“Oh,” he says, nodding, “yes. It’s not bad.”

“ _Not bad_?” the man says incredulously, pulling the book back and thumbing back to the beginning. When he speaks again Castiel wants to crawl under the seat and hide. He’s reading the opening lines out loud, and his voice curls around each word like they’re precious. Castiel tries not to stare at the way his mouth shapes each syllable and fails horribly.

“ _At the very edge of the desert there’s a line where without fail, the clouds stop. It’s beneath this line that Emmanuel waits for death_.”

The man looks up, an expectant look on his face. Castiel nods a little stiffly.

“Huh,” he says, and because the man is still looking at him, adds, “I'll have to read it.”

A grin splits the man’s features at that, and he closes the book.

“Another successful conversion,” he says, and sticks out his hand, “I’m Dean, by the way.”

“Castiel,” he replies, taking the offered hand, “nice to meet you, Dean.”

Shoving the book back into the bag under his seat, Dean shifts around before glancing back at Castiel with a look of exaggerated annoyance.

“You'd think they'd make these seats a little softer,” he says, “I got on in Lawrence and my ass was numb before we even got to Kansas City.”

“The sleeper cabins are much more comfortable,” Castiel tells him.

“I'll bet,” Dean says, looking around at the almost-full carriage, “less crowded, too. You take the train a lot?”

Castiel nods, leaning his head back against the seat to study Dean. He's lightly tanned and freckled, and his green eyes are creased at the corners with laughter lines. There's a small scar on his eyebrow, and his denim shirt is rolled up to the elbows, and he can make out the edge of a tattoo on his forearm. Compared to the timid, bookish types who he's met before, Dean is a far cry from what he pictures when he thinks of his audience.

“I prefer it to flying,” Castiel tells him.

“Yeah? Same. Driving trumps all, though.”

“I like trains,” Castiel goes on, feeling oddly talkative, “even if they are a little cramped. They're more of a journey than a way to reach a destination, if that makes sense.”

“That's why I like driving,” Dean tells him, “same kind of thing but I'm doing it on my own terms, you know?”

“You choose the stops,” Castiel says after a moment, and Dean nods.

“The stops, the soundtrack, the snacks,” he counts off on his fingers with a grin, “all the important stuff.”

“I suppose I can't argue with that,” Castiel laughs, and tucks his notebook back into his bag.

For the next two hours, they talk.

Dean tells him about his home town—Lawrence, Castiel learns, is home to the Jayhawks, Erin Brockovich, and not much else—and in turn Castiel tells Dean that his small town was the birthplace of Ken Kesey. When Dean shares the fact that he's a mechanic by trade, Castiel tells him about his day job at Sandover Insurance, but can't find a tactful way to admit that he wrote the well-loved book in Dean's hands, so he doesn't.

The conversation flows. Castiel can't remember the last time he spoke this much and actually enjoyed it, and when the train slows on it's approach to the station in Naperville he's disappointed to see Dean leaning down to grab his bag.

“Well, it was good talking to you,” Dean tells him, hooking the strap over his shoulder as he stands. He reaches out to shake Castiel's hand.

“You, too,” Castiel tells him, squeezing his palm, and Dean gives him a small wave before he walks away.

As he watches him leave, Castiel finds himself smiling. It occurs to Castiel that he should have asked for his number, but before he has a chance to call out his phone rings. He’s still smiling when he answers. Apparently it affects his voice.

“What are you so jazzed about?” his brother asks him slyly, and Castiel laughs to himself, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Hmm,” Gabriel says, but he lets it go, and launches into his reason for calling. Castiel barely hears any of it. He’s too busy looking out the window, watching Dean walk slowly across the platform. He watches him crossing the walkway toward the exit, weaving through the people there, and then feels his stomach flutter when Dean stops. Turns. Stares right back at the train, right at his carriage. He looks wistful.

“Hellooo?” Gabriel says, as the train starts to pull away, “you still there?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies, and pulls his gaze away from where Dean is still standing. There goes his chance. He sighs. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

 

 

* * *

 

Dean’s almost out the door when he thinks, _to hell with it_ , and turns back to ask if he can get Castiel's number. But he's already speaking to someone on his phone, smiling as he looks down at his knees and rubs the back of his neck, and Dean figures he’s taken. It's probably for the best.

Not much could have come from it—the guy lives in a whole other state, after all.

Still, he can't help but feel a little despondent when he steps down onto the platform, and he drags his feet as he makes his way out of the station. He pauses near the exit, looking back toward the carriage he'd climbed from, and sees nothing but the station reflected in the windows. With a sigh, he hefts his bag up onto his shoulder and walks outside, flagging down a taxi to take him to his hotel

The place he's staying for the weekend isn’t a particularly nice one, but it’s still a lot better than where he stayed last year, and as he rides the elevator to the third floor with his room card in hand he puts all thought of Castiel out of his head.

 _Tomorrow_ , he reminds himself, _I get to meet C.J. Novak._

He’s got his list of questions all worked out, and the outline of a short story for the workshop he’ll be attending, and he’s so hyped up about it that despite going to bed at nine he's still wide awake at three in the morning, excited and anticipatory as a kid before their birthday.

 

 

* * *

 

It’s Castiel’s third year attending Speckly Con, but the first time he’s actually a been a guest, and since he left Colorado he’s been more than a little nervous about stepping into the spotlight. It's been years since he had to speak in front of a crowd—the last being for a particularly unpleasant presentation in his final year of college—and somehow when his agent, Rachel, had organized this appearance he'd managed to forget how much he hates public speaking.

Still, when he arrives in the morning to see the long line of people waiting to get into the convention, he can't help but feel a little smug about the fact that he doesn't have to wait in it this year. His VIP lanyard swings from his neck as he bypasses the crowd, and as he goes it occurs to him that he'll be losing all anonymity today.

It hadn't been entirely intentional, but he's never much liked any photos of himself, and when his publisher had asked about putting a picture on the back of _A Length of Rope_ , he'd told her he'd rather not. When his second novel, _Dragonfly Eye_ , was published a year later, he'd just had a minor car accident and was too bruised to even consider posing for a picture, and soon after, when he'd visited his somewhat sparse Wikipedia entry in a fit of vanity, he saw himself described as _mysterious._

He decided that in his genre, such a characteristic was likely to work in his favor, and so last year, when he published _Vessel,_ he didn't even entertain the idea of including a picture. The book he's here to promote hasn't come out yet, but when it does it's jacket, too, will lack any sign of his face.

So, right now, none of these people know who he is.

He wonders how many of them would actually care if they _did_ know. As he passes them, he looks at the crowd and his heart pounds a little harder when he recognizes a few dressed as his own characters. The blush that spreads over his face and neck is infuriating, and he hopes he'll be able to hold himself together when it comes to his reading. The _New Dystopian Narrative_ panel and the writing workshop, at least, should both be a little easier to handle—he's co-hosting with three other, far more well known authors who were likely the draw cards for anyone attending—and he's glad that after today he'll be able to relax and enjoy the rest of the convention as an attendee rather than as a guest.

He flashes his lanyard at the security guard by the entry, and hefts his bag up on his shoulder. Following the directions the Speckly Con liaison emailed him, he heads toward the room where he'll be doing the reading in—he checks his watch—forty-five minutes. Deep breaths, he reminds himself.

 

* * *

 

Dean's alarm blares for nearly ten minutes before he's pulled from amorphous dreams of endless train carriages and warm, tan fingers trailing over his lips, his throat, his stomach, and he gropes around under his pillow for his cellphone to shut it off. It's not quite seven in the morning, but he needs to be at the convention center for C.J. Novak's reading at nine, and if the internet is telling him the truth it's going to take about half an hour to get there from his hotel.

Which means that he wants to leave with an extra half hour to spare, because he trusts city traffic about as much as he trusts his brother in the kitchen, which is to say, not at all.

Thanks to his all-access pass, he doesn't need to worry about getting a good seat, but he still doesn't want to be running into the room at the last minute. If it weren't for C.J. Novak, Dean would still be living in denial, and he never would have started writing down his own ideas if he hadn't been so inspired by the enigmatic author's work. He doesn't want to miss a moment.

As he jumps into the shower to wake himself up, he wonders, not for the first time, what the new novel is about.

He wonders if it'll be another haunting exploration of societies fear and fascination with death, like _A Length of Rope_ , or if it'll be more like his last book, which told the story of a cosmic being born into human form. Both novels had left Dean laying awake for hours after finishing them, just contemplating _everything_.

With it's fractured narrative split between the many lives of a reincarnated soul, _Dragonfly Eye_ , had been—as embarrassing as it is for Dean to admit to himself—instrumental in coming to understand and accept his fluid sexuality, and he can't help but wonder if he'll learn something new about himself with this new book, too.

He'd made the mistake of mentioning this to his brother after a few beers last week, and Sam, in the way he usually does, had gone off on some meandering spiel about how proud he was of his big brother for being so comfortable with himself. It only lasted until Dean mentioned how psyched he was to be meeting the author himself, and then Sam switched from supportive brother to pain in the ass, making kissy faces and telling Dean he should get his chest signed if he gets the chance.

As he remembers the conversation and subsequent prank war—he'd won by planting a clown mask in Sam's closet, thanks to some conspiring with his brother's girlfriend—he's reminded that he has no idea what C.J. Novak is even like beyond his work.

His wikipedia page gives away nothing but a birthdate, a brief description of his writing style, and a list of published works. There's no photo on the page, and there's never been a picture of him in any of the slip covers. Outside of a very brief interview in a literary magazine in which he spoke about the inspiration for his debut, there's been next to no promotion of his work.

Had Dean not found a copy of _A Length of Rope_ left behind on a park bench three years ago while looking after an ex-girlfriends kid, he never would have heard of him.

 _What if he's a jerk?_ he worries, but as he rinses shampoo from his hair, Dean tells himself that the chances of that are slim. No-one who writes about people with so much compassion could be all bad.

 

* * *

 

Outside the room where he'll be giving his reading, Castiel can hear the sound of people queueing up, and he looks around at the sheer number of chairs in the room with his heart racing. His hands feel sweaty, and he loosens his tie at his throat, wondering why on earth he dressed like this today. He doesn't feel like himself. He feels like his Sandover Insurance counterpart; stuffy and boring and wrong.

The suit jacket is too hot—the tie constricting.

With unsteady hands he yanks the tie off completely and rolls it up, jamming it onto the side-of-stage table that holds a water pitcher. There's a narrow mirror on the back of the stage door, and he looks at the panic in his own eyes and tries to calm down. He undoes the top three buttons on his shirt. Too much. He re-buttons it and thinks he looks ridiculous.

If he runs, he thinks, looking at the time, he could _just_ make it to his hotel room and back in time for the reading. But what would he even change into? A t-shirt is surely too informal. Undoing the top two buttons, he takes another look at himself and lets out a heavy breath. Drags in another through his nose and wonders if this would be a good time to take up smoking.

Out over the stage, a massive poster shows the cover of his new book, _From Perdition_. It's not entirely what he had in mind, but he didn't get much say in the design in the end, and it's better at least than the last one.

He's gazing over at it when a knock comes at the mirrored stage door, and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Hey!” an unfamiliar woman says brightly, pushing it open and sticking out her hand for him to shake.

She's wearing a headset, and has a laptop bag slung over her shoulder. “You're C.J. Novak, right?”

“Yes,” he says, shaking her proffered hand, “call me Castiel.”

“Awesome. I'm Charlie,” she points at her lanyard, where the word STAFF is printed in all caps, “I'm sound tech today. Just gonna double check that it's all working properly.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“No worries,” she grins, and moves past him, jumping down of the stage and hurrying to the back of the room where she ducks down behind a table of sound equipment. When she pops back up she calls out to him, “you want to say a couple of words into the mic there?”

Awkwardly, he steps up to the podium where he'll be giving the reading and clears his throat, unsure of what to say. The sound echoes around the room with a squeal. Charlie pulls a face.

“Sorry,” he says into the microphone, and she adjusts a few dials, gesturing for him to keep talking, “um. Hello. How are you?”

Charlie gives him a thumbs up, and he nods.

“That's good,” he says, and the speakers settle, stop crackling and whining, “Charlie, do you... do you know if there's many people waiting outside?”

Pushing back to her feet from where she'd knelt to tighten a connection, Charlie dusts off her knees and walks back up to him, hopping onto the stage.

“Maybe a hundred or so? The room holds one-fifty, but there's always a few stragglers,” she tells him, and Castiel feels the color drain from his face. He chews on his lip.

“Oh,” he says, and she looks at him with a frown.

“I'm guessing public speaking isn't your thing,” she says.

“I'm a writer,” he says, “I work best in my own head.”

“You know, people always say to picture the audience naked, but that's never worked for me,” Charlie says, “the _real_ trick is to just pick one person. Find a single person in the audience, and imagine that you're just talking to them. Takes the pressure off, y'know?”

“Won't that look strange?” he asks, “if I'm just staring someone down, they'll get uncomfortable.”

He knows this from experience.

“Not if you choose a different person every time you finish paragraph,” she shrugs, “it just helps to remember that you're talking to individuals, not a single giant entity. They're just people.”

Smiling, Castiel nods, and Charlie pats him on the arm.

“You'll do fine,” she says, adjusting her headset, “and I'll be up the back the whole time, anyway, so if you get freaked out by the crowd and need to stare someone down, I'm your girl.”

“Thank you,” he tells her, and she waves him off, checking the time.

“Marv should be here to let people in and introduce you in a few minutes. You gonna make an entrance?”

He nods, and as Charlie heads back to her sound equipment, he ducks behind the curtain, gulping down half the pitcher of water while he waits. He hears the moment the doors open, and the sound of voices gets louder, all excitedly talking. He eyes the rest of the water and decides that it's probably not a good idea to drink any more right now. Instead, he focuses on keeping his breathing steady.

At his hip, his cell phone buzzes, and he pulls it out to find he got a message from his agent an hour ago without noticing, and a new one from his brother.

The message from Rachel is brief and encouraging; _Good luck today! Call me when you're finished—have interviews lined up with a couple of journals._

The message from Gabriel is equally brief, but typically not so helpful; _Try not to piss yourself on stage, little bro! ;D_

He replies to both with a simple _thanks_ ,and by the time the messages have sent he can hear Marv, who seems to like the sound of his own voice, talking enthusiastically to the crowd. It's nearly five minutes before Marv stops rambling and calls Castiel to the stage. After another deep breath, Castiel steps out.

The crowd cheers and applauds and Castiel feels his face growing hot and prickly. Dipping his head, he waves out toward them, scanning the faces—all one-hundred and fifty of them—for the least threatening person to address for the first few minutes. He arrives at the podium, and just as he opens his mouth to speak his gaze settles on a man sitting in the second row. A familiar, freckled, green eyed man whose expression is situated somewhere around the midpoint between mortified and thrilled. Castiel blinks.

“Dean,” he says, and the name echoes out through the quiet room. He snaps his mouth shut, shaking his head as his face grows redder than he'd have thought possible, and tries again, casting his gaze firmly toward the back of the room where Charlie is looking at him with an encouraging smile, “uh. Hmm. Hi. I'm C.J. Novak, and I'll... um. I'll be... I'm going to read an excerpt? From my new novel, uh... _From Perdition_.”

There's a smattering of applause, and, forcing himself not to look back at the second row, Castiel picks up the as yet unopened copy of his new book from the podium. Carefully folding the cover back, his eyes flick back toward Dean against his will. He takes a steadying breath and looks toward Charlie, who gives him an eager thumbs up.

 _Focus_ , he tells himself. _Don't look at Dean_.

 

* * *

 

There's a few things that Dean could never have prepared himself for, and his favorite author turning out to be the gorgeous stranger from the train that he'd had a kind-of-sexy dream about last night is definitely one of them. Another is said favorite author catching his eye during a panel and stuttering Dean's name into the microphone.

This can't be real, he thinks.

There's a pounding in his chest and a flush on his face, and he pinches his forearm. Winces at the sting. Not a dream, then.

Onstage, C.J. Novak—Castiel—is completely out of sorts, stammering his way through the rest of his introduction, and it takes Dean a few seconds to focus on what he's saying.

“...so. Alright. This is _From Perdition_. Chapter one.”

He lifts the novel a little higher, breathing deeply before finally diving in, and Dean stares up at him as he reads.

“ _The ship was named Mercy, and she rose on the eve of war. With a shudder, she breached the atmosphere, her final breath heaving her out into the dark, and as she hurtled away from her home her crew worked in silence. Quiet, but without peace.”_

From his seat in the second row, Dean watches with rapt attention as Castiel reads the entire first chapter, his blue eyes fixed on the back of the room whenever he looks up from the page.

Too soon, the reading is over, and a line forms along the rooms edge, where a mic stand has been set up for audience questions.There are about a dozen fans waiting, and Dean's hand closes around the crumpled paper in his pocket.

He's wanted to ask about C.J. Novak's writing process for years. Has wanted to know if he thinks the character of Emmanuel from _A Length of Rope_ would have done things differently had he learned the true nature of his parentage sooner. Has wanted to know what inspired the idea of the all-seer in _Dragonfly Eye_ , and how he imagined the entity in _Vessel_ would react to learning of zir existence as a figment of human creation. He has wanted to know so many things about each and every story, and now he's too embarrassed to ask any of them.

Sinking back into his seat, Dean decides that if he can work himself up to it, he'll talk to Castiel at the workshop this afternoon. Hopefully, he thinks, he didn't make himself seem like too much of a crazed fan on the train. 

 

* * *

 

After a little under a dozen questions, Marv signals to Castiel that he needs to wrap things up, and he thanks the crowd again for coming. He tries to catch Dean's eye before he steps off the stage, hoping to convey to him that he should wait outside, but he's already on his feet and walking briskly toward the exit. Castiel swallows his disappointment and waves to the audience before he slips behind the curtain, his book tucked neatly under his arm.

Side of stage, he finishes off the pitcher of water without taking a breath, and a few moments later hears the double doors click shut. Charlie appears behind him shortly after.

“You did great,” she tells him, raising her fist for him to bump, “and the book sounds awesome by the way.”

“Thanks,” he says, glancing out into the empty room behind her and coming to a decision as he turns back to her, “do I look alright?”

Charlie looks him up and down, and reaches out to straighten his shirt collar.

“Dreamy,” she says with a wink, “why?”

“Are you sound tech for the New Dystopian Narrative panel tonight?”

“No, but I was going to come see it.”

“Well, if it works out, I'll tell you then,” he says, and hurries out across the stage, hopping down onto the main floor and crossing to the doors. When he steps outside, searching the sparse crowd for broad shoulders and sandy hair, Dean is nowhere to be seen. Frowning, he looks up and down the corridor. Left or right.

There's a lot more people to the right, and that direction leads to the main hall, where book and merchandise stalls are set up among throngs of con-goers. To the left, only a few people mill about, and when he remembers Dean's dislike of large crowds it's obvious which direction he should choose. He hurries along the corridor, and when he reaches the end where it joins another hallway he groans at the sight of two long lines in each direction. Dean could be anywhere.

There's still four hours until he has to start setting up for the writing workshop, and he's standing with his hands on the back of his head as he tries to decide whether to keep looking in this area or head back to the main hall when someone speaks, right behind him.

“Never read _A Length of Rope_ , huh?”

Castiel can feel his cheeks burning, and his embarrassment only grows with the knowledge that he must be bright red, but he turns around anyway, sheepish as he rubs the back of his neck.

“Technically, I never said I hadn't,” he points out, “I just asked you if it was any good.”

Huffing out a laugh, Dean crosses his arms over his chest. He looks nervous, and more than a little embarrassed himself. Castiel lets himself relax just a little. Maybe he's not the only one who feels like kind of an idiot.

“I'm not some psycho fan,” Dean blurts out, and from the look on his face Castiel guesses he hadn't meant to say it, “I had no idea who you were. I just thought you were some cute—just some guy on the train.”

Dean's face turns a fascinating shade of crimson, and he looks like he wants to disappear. Castiel is too focused on the words _cute guy_ to pay it too much attention.

“Do you want to join me for lunch?” Castiel asks, and the way Dean's face lights up is an answer in itself.

* * *

 

Across the street from the convention center, there's a short strip of restaurants, and Dean follows Castiel toward them. Neither have spoken since they stepped outside, and now, waiting to cross the street, Dean glances over at him from the corner of his eye. He huffs out a low laugh when catches Castiel doing the same thing.

“So—”

“Your—”

They both start at the same, time and Castiel grins, his smile toothy and wide as he gestures for Dean to go on.

“I was just going to say, your new book sounds great.”

“Thanks,” Castiel says, looking forward when the lights change and stepping out onto the crosswalk, “it's always nice to hear from a fan.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dean laughs, and shoves lightly at his shoulder, and whatever awkwardness had settled on them seems to dissipate.

Stopping outside a place called Robinson's, Castiel sticks his hands in his coat pockets and gestures toward it with his chin.

“I come here every time I'm in Chicago,” he says, “They make pretty good burgers, but I'm getting dessert for lunch. Their pie is _incredible_.”

Dean blinks at him.

“Marry me,” he says, and Castiel snorts as he pushes open the door, waiting for Dean to walk inside.

“Maybe later,” he says.

Joke or not, Dean can't help but grin, and as he heads inside and asks for a table for two, he thinks to himself that if it meant he'd get to see Castiel again, he could definitely get used to catching trains.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Jenpen over on Tumblr, who won a 5k DeanCas ficlet in my birthday giveaway! It's over 5k because I have little to no self control.
> 
> The original prompt, which I have now lost, went something like: Dean meets writer!Cas on a train on the way to a book signing. I changed it around a bit, but I hope this is the kind of story you were looking for!
> 
> \- Cass


End file.
